Paul Turner: Time to burnish those Washington State bona fides

Today is the anniversary of Washington’s 1889 statehood.

Seems like the perfect occasion to check out your Evergreen State bona fides.

With how many of the following can you personally identify?

1. In certain circles, you are known as the person who likes to argue that it is insane for Olympia to be the state capital.

2. You believe the designated official Washington State Remodeling Project should be the mud room.

3. You know what 1962 and 1974 have in common.

4. You know how to pronounce Sequim.

5. You know Spokane is mentioned in the episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” introducing the bluegrass playing mountain family, the Darlings.

6. You know Elizabeth Montgomery of “Bewitched” fame played Ruth Coe, wife of a Spokane newspaper editor, in a made-for-TV movie about the South Hill rapist.

7. You know how to spell the name of the state’s first woman governor, Dixy Lee Ray.

8. You know Bing Crosby had a Spokesman-Review paper route when he was a kid.

9. You know some consider the 1970 Spokane Indians, laden with future Dodgers, to be among the best minor league baseball teams ever.

10. You know Gonzaga basketball used to be in the Big Sky Conference.

11. Because you take pride in obscurity, nobody has ever heard of your favorite variety of apple.

12. You know the Channeled Scablands are a geologic formation in Eastern Washington while Badlands Meanie was a cartoon character on “Captain Kangaroo.”

13. You know the B-17 was a battle-tested Washington product.

14. You know the set-in-Seattle 1960s TV show “Here Come the Brides” was loosely based on actual events. Very loosely.

15. You know there used to be an Air Force base at Moses Lake.

16. You could lead a guided tour of local sites incorporated in the filming of 1985’s “Vision Quest.”

17. It’s still possible to hear colorful swearing inspired by accounts of the Seattle Pilots’ only baseball season found in the book “Ball Four.”

18. You know Grand Coulee Dam is not named after a character on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

19. You know industrialist Henry Kaiser worked in a Spokane hardware store before he went on to do other things.

20. You know Father’s Day was cooked up in Spokane.

21. You know the Northwest musical movement of which Nirvana was a part was not known as Scabies.

22. You know that Idaho is bigger than Washington in terms of square miles.

23. You know the Seattle SuperSonics won the NBA title in 1979.

24. You realize that while it is tempting to believe, Washington’s coffee mania does not trace its roots to state homeboy Jimi Hendrix’s recording of “Hey Joe.”

25. You know Colville used to be known as Pinkney City.

26. You are not the only one who has directed a profane oath in the direction of a Microsoft product.

27. Washington’s state song is not “Baby Got Back,” by Seattle’s Sir Mix-a-Lot.

28. You know the Beatles played in Seattle in the summers of 1964 and 1966.

29. You know that, unlikely as it seems, Spokane is referred to in the movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter” because Loretta Lynn lived in Washington for a time.

30. You know that Washington was the 42nd state, right after Montana and before Idaho.

31. You know Washington’s state bird is not the seahawk or the marmot finch.

32. You know what WPPSS stands for and you know how to pronounce the acronym.

33. You have your own opinion about how closely the TV show “Twin Peaks” came to reflecting life in small-town Washington.

34. You know there is more than one Dick’s hamburger restaurant in Washington.

35. You know who “Scoop” was.

36. You know we have slugs on this side of the state, too, though not geoducks.

37. You know that Bugs Bunny animator Chuck Jones was born in Spokane and filmmaker David Lynch lived here for a time as a child.

38. You have been to many if not all of Washington’s 39 counties.

39. You know Colfax was once known as Belleville.

40. You know someone who graduated from the University of Washington and now works for Washington State University.

41. You can name at least a dozen famous people who stayed at the Davenport over the years without going online to look it up.

42. You have hung out with Bigfoot and/or D.B. Cooper.

Contact the writer at srpaulturner@gmail.com.